Elderly men who escaped care home found at metal festival

Two elderly German men who went missing from their care home were discovered among the crowds at the world’s biggest heavy metal festival.

The pair disappeared without warning from an old people’s home in the rural Dithmarschen area of northern Germany on Friday night, prompting staff to call in the emergency services.

The search ended at 3am on Saturday morning, when the two men were finally found around 15 miles away at Wacken Open Air, the biggest metal music festival in the world, according to a police statement.

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The annual festival, whose previous headliners include metal legends such as Motorhead, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, attracts upwards of 80,000 attendees every year to the otherwise tranquil village of Wacken, in northern Germany.

Although the geriatric rockers were reported to be “disoriented and dazed”, they were “reluctant to leave” the four-day festival - only doing so with encouragement of a police escort, says Deutsche Welle.

“They obviously liked the metal festival,” police spokeswoman Merle Neufeld told state broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk, adding that the care home “quickly organised return transport” for the two residents after police picked them up.

A patrol car accompanied the retirees back to the care home as a “precautionary measure”, Der Spiegel reports.